The question of whether lexical decomposition is driven by semantic transparency in the lexical processing of morphologically complex words, such as compounds, remains controversial. Prior research on compound processing has predominantly examined visual processing. Focusing instead on spoken word word recognition, the present study examined the…

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the…

The statistical structure of a given language likely drives our sensitivity to words' morphological structure. The current work begins to investigate to what degree morphological processing effects observed in visual word recognition can be attributed to statistical regularities between orthography and semantics in English, without any prior…

Learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) tend to swap the two characters within a coordinative compound word in verbal identification and written production. This mixed methods study not only investigated how CFL learners identified intercharacter orthographic and semantic relationships within two-morpheme coordinative compound words, but…

This study tested the effect of constraining sentence context on word recognition time (RT) in the first and second language. Native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speakers of English performed self-paced reading and listening tasks to see whether a semantically-rich preceding context would lead to the activation of a probable upcoming word prior to…

Semantic transparency effects during compound word recognition provide critical insight into the organization of semantic knowledge and the nature of semantic processing. The past 25 years of psycholinguistic research on compound semantic transparency has produced discrepant effects, leaving the existence and nature of its influence unresolved. In…

We tested the theoretically driven hypotheses that children's orthographic and semantic learning are associated with their word reading and reading comprehension skills, even when orthographic and semantic knowledge are taken into account. A sample of 139 English-speaking Grade 3 children completed a learning task in which they read stories about…

The current study addresses a discrepancy in the psycholinguistic literature about the chronology of information processing during the visual recognition of morphologically complex words. "Form-then-meaning" accounts of complex word recognition claim that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings,…

We investigated whether cross-language activation is sensitive to shifting language demands and language experience during first and second language (i.e., L1, L2) reading. Experiment 1 consisted of L1 French-L2 English bilinguals reading in the L2, and Experiment 2 consisted of L1 English-L2 French bilinguals reading in the L1. Both groups read…

Although there is robust evidence that skilled readers of English extract and use orthographic and phonological information from the parafovea to facilitate word identification, semantic preview benefits have been elusive. We sought to establish whether individual differences in the extraction and/or use of parafoveal semantic information could…

A visual lexical decision task was used to examine the interaction between base frequency (i.e., the cumulative frequencies of morphologically related forms) and semantic transparency for a list of derived words. Linear mixed effects models revealed that high base frequency facilitates the recognition of the complex word (i.e., a "base…

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic…

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to…

The present study sheds light on the interplay between lexical and decision processes in the lexical decision task by exploring the effects of lexical decision difficulty on semantic priming effects. In 2 experiments, we increased lexical decision difficulty by either using transposed letter wordlike nonword distracters (e.g., JUGDE; Experiment 1)…

Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language (ASL) signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing…